


And I Will Try to Fix You

by Diary



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe, Bechdel Test Fail, Canon Character of Color, Conversations, Disturbing Themes, F/M, Friends Become Romantic Partners, Hearts Outside of Chests, M/M, Minor Hermione Granger/Ron Weasley, Minor Seamus Finnigan/Dean Thomas, POV Neville Longbottom, Queer Themes, Romance, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-29
Updated: 2016-02-29
Packaged: 2018-05-23 21:37:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6130876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Diary/pseuds/Diary
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Repost. A look at a world where hearts don't always stay inside people's chests. Complete.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And I Will Try to Fix You

**Author's Note:**

> I do not own Harry Potter.

Neville's seen Luna Lovegood sitting with Ginny a few times, but he's always avoided her.

She's strange-looking, and normally, this wouldn’t be a reason for avoidance, but he's also heard whispers of her. She’s a fourth-year Ravenclaw who might be legitimately mental with how she goes around dancing by herself in the middle of the stairs and telling people random facts about weird creatures with unpronounceable names.

When he ends up sharing a compartment with her and the others, his opinion shifts somewhat when he sees her heart displayed on her sleeve. It's not uncommon for girls her age to do so, but hers is ugly to look at. It's cracked all over, almost blue-black in colour, and swollen.

His own heart is firmly hidden. It almost completely broke in two when he was a tot, and it hasn't healed well. It’s a dark red-green colour, and like hers, it's heavily swollen. He doesn't even let his gran stay in the room when the family healer looks at it, and he's never let his schoolmates or housemates see it.

He tries not to stare and finds himself thinking, _brave, that girl is brave, Harry could use her as an ally, I wonder what kind of flowers she likes_.

Neville isn't above bribery or begging for things. Harry needs all the help he can get, and Neville will do anything to help him. If it means giving this girl rare, expensive flowers she probably won't take care of properly or going into the forbidden forest because a certain plant will make her weird little creatures happy, he will.

…

He finds himself thinking of hearts.

Harry's is hidden, but during his first four years, it wasn't. He kept it on his chest, and while his robes often covered it, when he wore muggle clothes, it was visible. It had a lightening shaped crack, dozens of little cracks, and a small, persistently black spot near the bottom. At the start of the term, it was always a pale, pink-gray colour, but it got brighter, bigger, and redder as the year went on to the point the cracks and black spot became almost unnoticeable until it rapidly lost colour and shrunk when the last week of the term came.

When Cedric Diggory was killed, before Harry thought to hide it, Neville saw it had developed a hole.

Ginny keeps hers beneath her robes. It’s bright red with a small hole in the middle and a few tiny cracks.

Meanwhile, Ron tries to keep his hidden, but he has a habit of angrily pinning it to his right sleeve whenever it gets itchy. It’s bright red, a little small, and across it are three deep, straight, pink scars.

Hermione likes to carry hers in her book-bag, but Ron often gets annoyed, digs it out, and pins it on her left upper pocket.

Neville remembers how Ron almost dropped it the first time he did this, and everyone could see why with the way it pulsed in his hands.

Ron and Hermione both seem content to utterly ignore both the fact it happened and continues to keep happening.

Aside from this particular reaction on its part, Neville reckons Ron likes looking at it. It's a pale pink, full of tiny cracks, and has two large, identically vertical scars. When she's engrossed in a book or feeling something passionately, it'll turn almost white.

Seamus and Dean haven't traded hearts; they're too young, and such magic is specifically designed to be incredibly hard for people to do on their own. No one powerful enough to do it for them would be stupid enough to do it for two little boys.

Still, Dean has a habit of pinning his heart on Shay's chest during lessons, and Shay insists Dean has to lock Shay's heart into Dean's art kit before they go to sleep at night.

Even with Seamus not believing Harry, Dean still gently took off Seamus’s unbroken, big, bright red heart and locked it away before they went to bed.

Dean's heart has two large scars, but when it's pinned to Seamus, it's so full and big a person has to look hard to see them.

Neville thinks about how Luna Lovegood looks like she could be a part of the Malfoy family. Malfoy has always guarded his heart, but Neville reckons it's a normal shade of red with a few deep scars and a few tiny cracks.

…

In DA, she literally knocks his heart out, and he scrambles to grab it and hide it before anyone sees.

On the floor, he glares at her as people surround him.

He doesn't think she did it on purpose due to the fact she's one of the least passive-aggressive people he knows, and even if she wasn't, he knows he hasn't done anything wrong. They were just practising after being partnered by Harry, and it turns out, in addition to being brave, she's a powerful little witch.

Bellatrix Lestrange has escaped, and the papers show Lestrange’s almost black heart is devoid of scars and holes.

He imagines Luna in a duel against Lestrange and imagines cackling Lestrange against loud-laughing Lovegood.

They’re both able to function despite not being quite right in the head, and he imagines Luna knocking Lestrange's heart out, skipping over, and carelessly smashing it under her bare feet.

His frown disappears with a small smile. Standing up on his own, he bows to her.

…

When he's in the hospital wing after the battle at the ministry with his heart healing in a jar from where Lestrange had managed to find it and _bite_ it, she often comes in to talk to him and Hermione with gifts in hand. For Hermione, she has books and pretty quills with odd-coloured inks. For him, she brings some of his favourite plants, smiles vaguely at Madam Pomfrey's disapproval, and gives him information about how different plants are doing in the greenhouses.

Ron comes in for his daily treatments, and when he curls up in the cot next to Hermione's, both their hearts glow.

It's so obvious Neville just wants to smack both of them. He wants to say, _hey, idiots, Cedric Diggory is dead, Bellatrix Lestrange is running free and loose, and I know I'm going to die in the next few years, so, d'ya think think you could please stop annoying everyone with refusing to see the truth_ and _seriously, you two are so stupid, even though I love you both, you are, I still remember the stomachaches you two caused me during third year_ and _for merlin's sake, once you go into a forest full of spiders, break numerous rules, and just generally do completely mad things for the other one, I think the gig's up_.

Luna has a habit of looking at him with her usual dazed expression when this happens, and he finds himself fidgeting and wishing his heart was back underneath his skin.

…

Neville didn’t know this until recently: When someone has a habit of sleepwalking, the professors do something to the dorm, and the dorm keeps them from leaving while asleep.

Unfortunately, no matter how many times and different ways Neville tries to tell the room not to let Luna sleepwalk out, it never works. Her sleeping mind is enough to get it to override him.

When Ginny and Padma start talking about tying Luna up or putting her in a body-bind, she doesn't react, and he remembers the awe he felt when he first saw her heart and how he desperately wanted the brave girl for an ally.

He tells the room to wake him up when she starts to leave, and when it does, he grabs her hand, puts her in his bed, and slings an arm across her stomach.

Once, his hand accidentally brushes across her heart, and she makes a noise in her sleep while he feels his own heart jump painfully.

It takes him a few days to get a proper night's sleep afterwards.

He has touched another heart before.

He remembers a woman dropping hers in Diagon Alley once when he was about five or six. He’d picked it up, carefully dusted it off, and handed it to her.

Before this, his mum would give him hers to play with, but he's not sure if he has any real memory of this or not. Gran's told him he once buried it in the garden, and his mum and his dad spent half a day trying to find it while being unaware he'd been anywhere near the garden in the first place.

Since he’s gotten older, he’s decided touching a heart is serious. It isn't to be done by him or to him.

What makes it worse is Luna's always scared him.

As happy as he is to have her as an ally, if it were a time of peace, he'd try to avoid her. She's nice to him, but sometimes, she does things, and he’s reminded him of his parents, or worse, Lestrange.

Sometimes, she still reminds him of Malfoy.

Her mum's dead, and until Ginny noticed her, no one really showed her kindness. _Loony_ does hurt her, and so does having her stuff nicked.

Neville understands she's human. She's someone admirable, and someone more than her bravery, powerful spells, and earnest explanations of bizarre things.

He understands, but it doesn't change things.

…

Covered in snake blood, he finds her bleeding and dazed with her heart literally cut in two.

He wraps it in his jumper and whispers reassuring words until someone notices them.

Padma carefully puts the heart back together with tiny stitches, and then, with a spell over them. Ginny holds Luna's hand while Padma does, and Ron tries to argue for getting a healer or, at least, Madam Pomfrey.

With Luna shivering, crying, and muttering things no one can decipher, Neville reckons Ron is likely right.

Regardless, all the healers and Madam Pomfrey are running to and fro.

When Luna came back from being Malfoy's captive, her heart was small and stretched thin with tiny holes, large scars, and a few black spots, and he had thought there was no way it could ever be worse and her still manage to be alive.

Of course, she continued to wear it on her sleeve.

“Here,” Padma says, and suddenly, she’s put the heart into his hands before he can protest.

It twitches, and Luna lets out a half-gasp, half-moan.

Carefully, he slips it under her shirt, and they all watch the outline find the right place and sink until there's no more movement.

…

Then, Seamus accidentally falls on top of Luna.

Before Dean left, he put his heart in Seamus's favourite jumper pocket.

The problem was, he didn't take Seamus's in exchange, and it doesn't have to be a person's own heart, but everyone needs to have a heart with them or they soon end up little more than zombies.

Even muggles who only understand a little bit about the magic behind hearts understand this.

When Seamus found the heart, he'd had a full-blown mental break, and they'd had to put him in a body-bind until Padma managed to convince him she knew for sure Dean was still alive. She put it in an unbreakable jewellery box, and Seamus became obsessed with trying to protect both the box and the heart and had terrifying mini-episodes whenever a new crack or scar appeared.

With all this freshly in mind, Seamus trying to kill Dean was fair enough in Neville's opinion.

Unfortunately, when someone deflected the spell, Seamus fell backwards and landed right on top of Luna's chest.

He watches in horror as the heart falls out, the stitches come undone, and Luna lets out a bloodcurling scream.

Finally, they don't have to worry about getting someone qualified as several healers immediately appear, assess the damage, load Luna onto a floating cot, and carefully gather her heart into a special containment bubble floating a few inches above her chest.

…

Bringing old issues of The Quibbler and her drawing supplies, he comes to the hospital and sits down next to Luna.

She tells him the healers are worried but try not to let her hear.

Looking at the heart in its floating bubble, Neville can see why. It's refusing to heal, smaller than ever, almost flat, and the veins show sharply against it.

Old Xeno is still in Azkaban, and Neville goes every day with Harry and the others to try to get the ministry to stop messing around and just release him. One day, he gets angry and starts lecturing the bored-sounding official about all Luna's done, how necessary an ally she is, and explains in detail how desperately she needs her father. He ends with threatening to bring back a picture showing just how bad her heart really is.

When he comes back, he notices her heart looks a bit fuller, and he hopes this is a sign someone will do something soon.

…

After Xenophilius is released, Luna's heart gets better, and eventually, she's released.

She and her dad end up renting a small cottage near a huge forest and a large garden.

Neville sort of invites himself over, partly, to keep Luna from over-straining herself with garden work, and partly, because, frankly, he just doesn’t trust Old Xeno not to do something like set the garden on fire or fill the forest with deadly, hard-to-remove weeds.

His gran has a fit, and when he stops to think, he's aware going over to someone's house and kicking them out of their own garden isn't a decent or legal thing to do, but seeing as how Luna always brings him pumpkin juice and sandwiches and her father often gives him little trinkets in thanks, he reckons they either don't realise this or simply don't care.

Eventually, when he realises Luna isn't going to touch things without permission or pick things not ready to be picked, he lets her sit in the shady part of the garden while he works. Her heart seems better than ever; it still has the scars, cracks, black spots, and holes, but it's mostly normal-sized and a nice shade of red.

They talk, argue, and sometimes just sit together in peaceful silence.

He supposes it isn't a surprise when he first sees her in her simple blue tunic, barefoot, and skipping through the woods with her heart resting on her right wrist and her straggly hair flying as free as it can in her messy ponytail, and thinks, _Merlin, she's pretty, when did that happen_ and _I probably should have noticed that a few years ago_.

It doesn't change anything.

All the fears he's ever had of talking to pretty girls have disappeared after his seventh year. She's still just Luna, the brave girl and powerful witch who’s going to be a woman soon, if she isn't one already.

…

When she goes back to Hogwarts, he worries about her heart, tells her not to listen to anyone who takes the mickey, gives her a flower necklace he made, and tells her be sure to smuggle him samples from the greenhouse.

Sprout's retired, and he's not so sure he can trust this new Herbology bloke. From what he’s heard, the man’s only thirty and, apparently, only made As on Herbology during his Hogwarts days.

They write, and when he sees her on holidays, her heart has a few more cracks and is swollen slightly but doesn't look to be in danger of breaking again.

…

One day, she's trying to do handstands on the ceiling with her sticky trainers, and her heart falls to the floor.

He hurries to scoop it up and is relieved when he sees there's no damage. Absently, he dusts it off, and Luna falls off the ceiling.

Thankfully, she manages to fall on the couch.

…

Something sort of clicks in his mind, and he finds himself staring at the heart in his hands. It's pulsing slightly and cool against his palms.

Reluctantly, he holds it out. “Here.”

“You can hold it,” she tells him.

He traces his fingers across it, and vaguely, he's aware her breathing has changed, but he's too busy watching in amazement as some of the tiny cracks disappear completely. “Er, Luna-”

“It's okay, you can go on,” is her only response.

Keeping his touch gentle, he strokes while focusing on all the cracks he can find. Some of them take time, but he sits down in a nearby rocker and doesn’t relent until they disappear. As he does, it returns to normal size, becomes a bright red, and beats even harder but steadier.

Given enough time or just the right amount of attention, cracks can quickly heal; Seamus's heart was often devoid of cracks because, whenever he got one, Dean would sling his arms around his shoulders or give him some sweets, and soon enough the crack would be gone.

Scars, black spots, and holes are different. It's rare for a scar to ever completely disappear, for black spots to turn back to the normal colour, and holes may get smaller, but they never completely close.

When all the cracks are gone, he feels close to exhausted. Finding the smallest scar, he leans down to kiss it. Luna draws in a sharp breath followed by a soft moan, and he looks tiredly as the scar becomes thinner and smaller.

“Here,” he says.

Pinning it back on her wrist, she gives him a bright-eyed look. “Thank you, Neville.”

…

Beyond him making sure it's alright and her assuring him it is, they don't talk about it. Just, whenever they have time alone, she'll hand him her heart, and he'll stroke it until they're both tired.

…

When she asks to see his, he only hesitates after he's said yes.

She doesn't say anything, and finally, after years of never taking it out of his chest aside from brief hospital visits, he does.

He's surprised when he holds it in his hands. It's not near as swollen as before, and most of the cracks have disappeared. It's more red than green, and it's still all crookedly put together, but he thinks it might be just a tad bit straighter than before. Of course, there's still the scars and the mark from Bellatrix Lestrange.

When he hands it to her, he feels a jolt in his brain and a shiver go down his spine.

Grabbing his hand and pushing him on the couch, she takes the rocker.

Humming, she examines it. Her touch is gentle, but he feels nerves in his back reacting. It makes him a bit worried he's going to involuntarily jerk his leg like crups and dogs do when they're scratched in the right place.

Lying down, he vaguely sees spots beneath his eyes, and he realises in half-guilty amazement this is the feeling he always expected the few times he tried wanking but never came. His breathing is funny, but he keeps telling himself he's okay, no one is going to hurt him, especially not Luna.

“Are you okay, Neville?”

“Yeah,” he dizzily answers. “Please, keep going.”

When they're both exhausted, she sits on his stomach and puts his now crack-free, almost back to normal size, completely red heart back in his chest, and he reaches up to stroke her cheek and tangle his fingers through a strand of her hair.

In return, she leans down, and then, they're kissing, and briefly, he feels a warm beating in his heart, and then, it's steady.

“I feel it, too,” she whispers.

They're both crying and kissing, and they don't stop until a knock at the door makes both of their newly-healed, still somewhat damaged hearts jump.


End file.
